


Libera me (In die illa tremenda)

by golden_d



Category: Torchwood
Genre: Community: writerinadrawer, Gen, Pre-Canon, WriterInADrawer 4.08
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-05
Updated: 2010-08-05
Packaged: 2017-10-10 23:14:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/105477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/golden_d/pseuds/golden_d
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This story was written for Writer in a Drawer Round 4.09.</p>
<p>The requirements were:</p>
<p>Prompt: Letters or Diaries<br/>Added Element: a song</p>
<p>If you are interested in this contest please visit http://community.livejournal.com/writerinadrawer.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Libera me (In die illa tremenda)

**Author's Note:**

> This story was written for Writer in a Drawer Round 4.09.
> 
> The requirements were:
> 
> Prompt: Letters or Diaries  
> Added Element: a song
> 
> If you are interested in this contest please visit http://community.livejournal.com/writerinadrawer.

 

Excerpt from  A History of the Torchwood Institute, Volume III: 1980–2029 , ed. F. J. Whitman . M. Katzenberg-Jones, translator.  
  


* * *

  


31 December, 1999.

Jack:  
  
For almost one hundred years, you have been an invaluable servant of Torchwood Three. There are many missions you have undertaken that other men would have refused and lesser men would have failed. Not once have I heard of you turning aside from your duty, nor have I ever seen you do so myself. But never, I am sure, did any of my predecessors give you an order or a mission such as the one I will give you today.   
  
By now you have been despatched to deal with the Millennium Bug, and the rest of the team has been despatched to procure alcohol for the night’s festivities. I myself have already started drinking, as when meeting the inevitable, I feel it is best to strengthen oneself with a bit of liquid courage. And if tonight I am to become a murderer, I would not do it sober. A toast to you, Jack, as the lone survivor of tonight. 

I have looked into the future, and I have seen the moment of my death, and it is not a moment any man should have to see before its arrival. But I have also seen what follows from my death, and because of that I shall not rage against inevitability: I would much prefer to meet the inevitable face-to-face. There is much to be said for being able to look your own death in the eye, and accept it as best as you are able.

I’ve made sure my gun is fully loaded, but I hope I will only need five bullets tonight: One for each member of the team, one for me, and the fifth for you if you get in the way.

By the time you read this, we will all be dead already.  There is no better alternative; I will give the team the best deaths I can give them, for I can give them no explanation that will satisfy, not for a team as bent on knowledge as ours is. I have seen the stars go out, seen the skies flood with fire, seen a future where the only song on earth is a song of mourning. I have seen Torchwood die and die all over again. We are simple, driven, terrifyingly brilliant people. For all we have seen in our work, we have not yet been shattered by the world. We deserve a better future than that, and I have seen the many ways we all will die if we live through the end of tonight.

I am not the man you are, Jack, to face death daily, and to die with the sure knowledge of your return. But of all the options I see laid out before me, there appears to be none more palatable than this—and I would rather die the death of my own choosing than allow my life to be stolen from me unnaturally. It is an unkindness to the team, to deprive them of that same choice, but I have no doubt that they would thank me if they knew what fates the future held.

If history remembers me at all, though surely it will not, it will be as a madman, broken by Torchwood and the weight of his future. Yet I am not mad. I have never been as certain of anything in my entire life as I am certain of what I must do to save us. I will grant that I may be imperfectly sane, as are all in service to Torchwood, but I am not mad. Perhaps that is more terrifying than anything else, the pure, solid fact that I know what it is I am about to do.

Everything is about to change. The Torchwood that will face the future must be a different Torchwood than the one I have led, and if I thought there were a way to transform this team into that one, then I would do it. But I cannot, and if the only ways out are death or Retcon, well—Retcon requires more planning and paperwork than we have the time for. Death is so much easier. 

This team lacks the ferocity you will need to survive the storm, the ability you will need to stand strong against adversity. If I were to be met with the scene you will meet on your return, the Hub strewn with the corpses of your teammates and your leader, I do not doubt that I would take the gun to my own head.  You have that option, but its effects will not last. You will carry on, because you have no other choice.

It is not much of a gift I give you, Jack, and if you call it a curse, be assured that I will not blame you. Torchwood Three is yours, and you will spend your first hours as leader tending to the dead, cleaning up the mess I have left behind. There is a file on my desk—the file beneath this letter, in fact—that contains all the information about accounts, passwords, operations, and government contacts you will need, and instructions on all the day-to-day work that goes into running Torchwood Three. The families of the team will be well-provided for, have no fear; those arrangements have already been made. As for my own family, my parents passed away years ago, and my wife and daughter are already dead.

My house key is taped inside the file. Please see to it that they get a proper burial.

Everything else I leave up to you. May God have mercy on my soul.

Alex

 

**Author's Note:**

> SO MUCH LOVE for Foxy, the best beta ever. Couldn't do it without you!


End file.
